Deck Combat Adjustment

Ain't that the truth. I joined the SCA to fight with steel, but when someone comes up and tells me I can't wear a certain color, I just wanna' draw rubber band guns akimbo and tell 'em to take my royal blue sash from my cold, dead corpse.

 

I gotcha', thanks for clearing that up.

So I understand that we should be looking for suggestions that make minimal course corrections. That's why card combat is in the suggestion at all. If it was up to me to come up with a completely different system, "card combat" wouldn't be uttered once. However, I know that a lot of people really enjoy the card combat, or at least the concept of it, and that Portalarium has a timetable (even if it isn't public) to get things completed. We can't spend a year on combat, that boat has sailed. But any changes made to combat need to be meaningful changes; we cannot spend time tweaking and polishing a system that is fundamentally flawed. It isn't fun for the majority of people. It's handicapping combat on multiple levels (I really can't stress this one enough - I don't think a lot of people are fully grasping how much you cannot do with mobs, PvP, skills and general combat gameplay, even if the UI was magically seamless and immersive).

It's quite literally killing the game; daily there are people coming in and speaking out, some who don't post anything for two years and are breaking their silence on how terrible it is. It isn't just the UI. It isn't just the random availability. It isn't just the gimmick of the entire system. The parts are many and the whole is great; fixing a handful of them but leaving in the rest still means we lose a lot of backers and potential customers. The fact that polls are regularly coming up with (at best) roughly 50/50 splits in "love/hate" relationships is not good. Let's say, for a moment, that it isn't the majority of people who hate it, that the simple majority do, in fact, love it. Even under those (best case) circumstances, a fundamental gaming mechanic being rated "M for meh" is a game killer. The novelty will wear off, and the system only offers novelty; the combos and power-ups/stacks and everything else can be easily (and arguably better) accomplished with different systems that are in no way vanilla WoW hotbar-esque. When the novelty wears off (which I would argue is right around 100-200 hours of gameplay, a flash in the pan in terms of MMO longevity), then we have a major issue in player retention. Every suggestion we make or consider must be done with the fact that we're releasing in 2016 with 2013-14 gameplay and graphics (or worse, in the case of graphics). Competition will be fierce, and while many may say, "Good, then leave," the servers come down if no one's paying to keep the lights on. We have to remember this is first and foremost a business, and unless folks are willing to fund the game entirely out of pocket, then failure is a very real possibility.

That said, we have the time to make the system different enough to retain old players and entice new backers. I'm not saying my suggestion is the answer, certainly not, but it takes the most controversial hoop-of-fire obstacle out of the picture when it comes to playing SotA. So long as card combat is a playstyle to be chosen like every other facet of the game, we're gravy; problem is, there is no evidence that there is enough experience and talent on the dev team to mastermind a balancing act that most large studios struggle with concerning half as many factors.

If there were some serious discussions by the devs that say, "Okay, these major issues that card combat causes can be rectified with these tweaks to mob AI, UI, skill balance, etc." then I'll be more than happy to listen. I'm not seeing such responses to the other issues, though. I'm only seeing a basic babystep of a fix to the UI issue - something that should have been addressed last year - and even that doesn't make the system fundamentally better. It just makes it so you aren't paying 70-80% of your attention to the hotbar.

 

There is one thing we can't forget, there is an advantage of a publisher which a company is indebted to, that is that there is another pair of eyes which hold the purse strings and aren't as close to the development of the game who can take an overall more objective look at a game. For this game we have the problem that yes they have SAID that they will throw it out if it's "not fun" but who decides on that? The same person who created it. Who really thinks that self evaluation without any outside oversight is actually objective. And the longer that the system goes on with cries of "hang on, it will get better" the harder it will be for the devs to admit that they got it wrong and throw it out and start again,

 

And after all the publishers that have taken that vision of his and twisted it, he deserves a chance to not settle. Not have someone else water down that spirit of design. Not a publisher, not his staff, not us. I feel like I'm helping defend that, because, beyond just the rights and freedom a kickstarter brings him, his legacy is on the line. EA damaged it, NC soft fataly wounded it, and every time someone else tries to glue their ideas into his whole vision, it warps and goes badly.

Garriott has a tendency to actually move the industry in interesting ways by planting a flag outside the mainstream and pulling the main stream towards his ideas. What he builds becomes the gold standard. He brought us a morality system in games, and to this day, it hasn't been done as well. So if he says "no UI" ... just do it. Start with that design and work out. Don't put some other plan in, and try to get it close to his vision.

 

It's very easy to blame EA but after being here I have to wonder if that's fair, it wasn't EA which loaded this game with more and more micro-transaction while the rest of the industry (including EA) are realising that FEE TO PAY, won't fly anymore

It's not EA who put a card game in instead of combat (so who's idea really WAS the platforming in U8?)

There is no evil publisher to blame this time when stupid decisions are made, it all has to rest on him.

Meanwhile biowere pump out pretty dam good games actually. Dragon Age 2 might not have been the best and maybe the ending of mass effect 3 could have been better but the reason people cared so much about that was because his amazing the rest of the game and the previous 2 were

U7 and SI were fantastic games, but maybe that was just a fluke and he lost his touch

Maybe I am wrong, I hope I am but there is a good saying on all superannuation ads here "pass performance is not an idivstio not of future performance"

 

So, lots to hit here. And what follow is all my take from reading the interviews and my own experiences with his games over the years.


The last 100% Ultima feeling game was 5. Ultima VI started to lose it's edge, and the story was full of cannon loop holes, and just seems out of place in the rest of the series. It's also the first game where he wasn't coding anymore. The game was officially a team project, and it showed, but most people give it a pass for it's interactive world, which at the time was the height of that game-play.

Ultima VII (BG and SI) were very good, but combat was forgettable. I give this a bit of a pass because this real time style of combat was relatively new to the era, and it didn't hurt the rest of the game. It also was the time his brother left the company to go elsewhere and more of the actual business stuff fell to him until EA could fully take over.

My understanding is VIII was both heavily noted by EA on things it had to be, as well as suffering from the same thing the other games had been suffering from, design team had too much influence. There's a Waren Spector interview with an ex Origin employee that was a Q&A tester at the time where he talks about how he wrote up 100 things wrong with 8 because of his frustration with the developers there. It's why a lot of 8 got better with the CD release.

That said, we still can blame EA for canceling the expansion, which was done, moments before it's launch.

And XI is a comedy of errors, but I lay most of the blame at EA for shuffling Garriott arround between UO and XI, and with the time it took to get done, needing an engine change, EA was the ones who decided to push it before it was done.

Now...

All that said...

Garriott does have one big problem when it comes to this stuff according to people who used to work for him. He is hard to work for, but does design by committee... He's willing to let go of some of his ideas to let the team get some input on that. So in this case, Chris Spears has some how managed to push in a combat system that Garriott did not seem to have good initial impressions of the concept of during the kickstarter. While I do hold Chris Spears as the architect for this, you are right when it comes to this statement:

"There is no evil publisher to blame this time when stupid decisions are made, it all has to rest on him."

And that's why I want this to be 100% his. He's who most of us backed. His legacy is on the line. This should be his vision to the extent it can be. I don't look at cards and think "Yeah... that's a Lord British RPG."

EDIT: Yes, I know WAAAYYYY too much about this stuff. Ask me pretty much anything about gaming pre 2000... I probably have an opinion on it.

 

I know no one will ever know but I would LOVE to know who's idea the jumping was in 8 (completely agree with you about the expansion, that makes sense to be an issue with EA), I just can't see a publisher walking in and sitting down its developer and saying "right now you know what your game MUST have, it must revolve completely around jumping over instant death pits". Yea the tight time frame meaning the story was cut down I can see blaming EA for but the jumping? that's got to be all on the design team and that means no matter who's actual idea it was the buck has to stop with the boss.

The same with the issues I really can't forgive about this game. MICROTRANSACTIONS in a game which cost a MINIMUM of $45 and for a lot of us WAY WAY more than that. That's just unforgivable, there is just no excuse for that and this HAS to stop with Richard

As for the combat here, it maybe Chris who's pushing this but it has to have been signed off by the boss so again "the buck stops with the boss". Both these things the BEST you can say is if he doesn't like them then its a massive failure of leadership but that is being way to kind. Paticually in this game, he must have seen the innumerable threads over the last 2 years by you and others complaining about this, he plays it himself, he must think its good himself and support it or I don't know

I used to be a head chef at a restaurant and before that I was a cook and before that an apprentice. At these places even before I became the boss part of my role was to make up dishes for the specials. Every dish was checked by the head chef WAY before it landed on any customers plate, that is part of leadership. Yes you have to give your team a job to do or why bother HAVING a team, and you have to give them autonomy and scope for there own creativity. But that doesn't mean you can wash your hands of the end product and blame them when it sucks, you still have oversight over the work and ultimately you still wear responsibility for it.

Lastly I avoided talking about 9 because your right, the staff shuffling is all on EA, they made those decisions, they sacrificed U9 for UO, but who wrote "whats a paladin?" and "the codex of ultimate wisdom?", how did THAT slip passed RG? there's rushed and then there's THAT

 

Yeah, the microtransactions are pretty bad, but I never really planned on owning a house or anything. I'm more worried about this combat system.

 

I was under the impression that after like VI or VII, RG had a lot less input or at least hands-on influence in Ultima. Same, especially, with UO. I watched a few interviews and read several articles on UO, and it appeared (at least to me) a lot of what I (and many, many others) loved about UO had little to do with RG. Could be wrong on that, though.

If people wanna' pay for houses or transistor radios or whatever, let 'em. I don't personally care, especially if it's all just cosmetic and it helps fund the game. The reality is, if microtransactions and houses are that big of a deal for the common player, you made the wrong game. It means you made a SIMS game where the whole point of playing is the housing and dressing up; I don't feel SotA is that, at least not intentionally. The amount of effort and focus and money spent on it is a little whack, but I can understand it. Time to move on, though, and get the actual game part of this, well, game made.

That means making sure the fundamental mechanics of the game are appealing and streamlined. If your game is a platformer, you make sure the jumping, running and landing is superb. You don't let running feel like slipping on ice. You don't make jumping too high vertically and too short horizontally, vice versa or both. You make sure hit detection is solid, you make sure that where on your character's feet is 100% counting as "solid landing". Is it the absolute last pixel of his toe? The heel? The center of the character, where there are no feet standing at all? Is one better than the other?

That doesn't mean your platformer can't have a great storyline. It doesn't mean you can't allow for a lot of customization of your character to suit different playstyles and upgrades to keep it interesting and unique throughout. It doesn't mean you can't have non-linear gameplay and exploration. It doesn't mean you can't have crafting or mini-games that can affect gameplay positively or act as a distraction, including collecting hard to get rares or decorations for your shelves, a testament to your adventures.

It does mean, however, that getting from A to B must be intuitive and fun at all times. It does mean that input must make sense and be consistent at all times. It does mean failure or death of a character must be directly linked to the player's actions or inaction, where luck and RNG and circumstance doesn't determine failure with any regularity, allowing a player, first and foremost, to learn from mistakes and how to get better at the game. I think you'd be hard pressed to find a best seller that doesn't follow that general trend in making the core mechanics as spotless as possible.

 

Great stuff here fellows in the last few posts, very nice.

Outside of the combat step off the cliff, I think this game is shaping up pretty well.

Unfortunately, as a conceptual artist, I see no reasonably easy fix for the deck combat gaffe. While the "official line" right now might be that they "have to" go with it- there is always a breaking point for systems that just don't work.

I think it is very important to honestly state our beliefs and opinions- how we actually feel about the combat system. It's easy to just say, "It's a Richard Garriott game, so it must be fine", because many of us consider his earlier output down right beloved.

I know I do. I don't feel bad having contributed serious cash to this game, because I gained six or seven years of nearly nightly play with UO, and endless tons of memorable playtime with the earlier Ultimas. If the combat system doesn't become bearable, I most likely will confine myself to house decorating and social RPGing, and make a fisherman or something that keeps me as far as fark as possible from having to fight anything.

But, it doesn't have to be that way. Over half of those polled think the combat is pretty dreadful officially, and the problem is not the implementation- but the actual design theory, which is illogical at best.

The entire problem with the deck system is that it collides head on with what modern computers do best. The simulation of combat, between your avatar and your creature of choice, is more realistically, more excitingly, and more satisfyingly produced by visually fighting the creature face to face, than simulating that fight with a deck of cards.

By trying to show your avatar physically facing off with the beastie, and at the same time having you, the player, face off with the UI, it accomplishes neither thing very well at all.

A deck system would be fine, fun, and intellectually interesting if it was retained within the planning/skills section of your "outside the world" UI. You could fiddle with your skills, in the form of cards, all you liked.

It's when you tack the card play to the "action" going on within the game world itself that you violate the most basic principles of good game design-

- which is to keep the fighting feeling real and meaningful whilst the UI is kept as invisible as humanly possible.

Now, there are games where you play cards that are great. The game is abstracted and calls for great strategy, careful constructions of decks, second guessing your enemy and all the rest. They are very fun animals- but they simply don't mix well in a game where you have very realistic housing for your avatar, where your avatar harvests resources, and crafts items in a straightforward manner, and then your avatar heads out to fight monsters in an environment with cover, hills, caves, water, swamps, and so on.

Once the decks are brought out, none of that matters diddly. Your avatar is now meaningless. You are forced to become almost schizophrenic as you are pulled out of the game world you have been spending all of your time in as your chartacter. Suddenly your roleplaying is interrupted-

- and how is this even conceivable in a game by Richard Garriott that otherwise carries all the noble trappings of his games of yore?

 

Yes and no.

I believe it was Star who started it in sort of a skunk works kinda way, and convinced him to go with it. Then they had to fight with EA to make it happen, and even then it almost didn't. I'm quoting from memory though, so take that with a grain of salt.

For a while he had his fingers in both UIX and UO... then EA told him, pick. Either put someone else in charge of UO, or cancel UIX.

What I can see them saying is "No one wants this slow-ploddy RPG stuff anymore. (If you remember the era, RPG's were dying... quickly... Most had written them off until Baldur's Gate revitalized them). Build us something with a more action/fast paced feel. Keep in mind, within 2 years of Ultima VIII, Diablo had launched. That was the direction people thought the games were heading.

I wish I could remember who the interview was with... it was Warren Spector interviewing an ex Origin employee... if I find it I'll post it. But he said the devs on 8 were really brutal towards the player, hiding explosive mushrooms behind trees, etc.

I'm going to go with a yes and no on that. Yes, it's gotten out of hand and needs some serious reigning in. On the other hand, it's an online game without monthly fees. They need some continuous stream of revenue to keep the money coming in.

Again, modify the combat to a tablet port, make it a pure card game, and have people buy packs to avoid earning them in game (ala Harthstone). Branch out, build little things that support it using the same assets.

Still agreeing with that. Just saying that it is easy as the boss to get caught in the echo chamber when things are busy. "We'll give him time and roll it back if people don't like it" and then he keeps saying things that we're the vocal minority, or that the polls support him... I can see it happening. All the more reason to say "Look, we support the vision you, Richard Garriott, gave us in the dev hangout. Do that. "

I remember an interview with him when he was dev testing it with others, and he made the comment that he didn't understand how all the QA people were making so much money in game. Then he found out they were stealing it from all the NPC houses. Q&A is giving it positive reviews, he doesn't really have time to give it that kind of once over, so it gets past him until it's late. And then EA says "It's out by Christmas, or it's not going out ever." You take your lumps and push it out and hope to get as much done as you can. It's not right, but it's why I wanted to give him the chance to do this without having to look over his shoulder. I'm hoping by saying we want his vision, he'll tighten the reigns and drag people back to it.

I don't have anything else to say to that, I just want it repeated as often as possible, by as many people as possible.

 

While I like this combat system overall, I disagree regarding skill availability being a problem that needs to be solved, and hence i don't like the full "back to basics" premise. Nonetheless it's a good way of addressing critical flaws of the current combat system, and that's undeniable.

I'd like to drop something in, though... i think it's sad for Combos to be pushed away into a randomly available cooldown. I'd prefer if combos were implemented by chance: everytime you execute a certain skill, you have a % chance of enabling a "window of opportunity" for a combo; For example, my character uses Thrust, then a visual come in meaning i have the option to put in a Combo (color, text, whatever it's easier), and when i use double slash it hits one additional time. If the next skill after getting the visual is not double slash, the combo is wasted. The chance for the combo to come up could depend on the amount of cards of that skill tree you have in your hand. That way you can spend cards to earn a buff, or you can keep it to ensure more combos come in.

 

Isn't that pretty much just adding quicktime events to combat? Whats the other person going to do while your winding up your quicktime counter? just freeze?

 

Ever play Resident Evil 6? Whether you love or hate the "new" REs in line with RE4, RE6 was pretty much panned for the series of quicktime events that strung together the rest of the game. Quicktime events were cool about 10 years ago when it was a novel concept; now, it's seen (and received) as a cop-out by devs who can't make a more intuitive system. The irony is the card system as it is right now is similar to quicktime events, having to watch your hotbar. We need a more intuitive system.

Otherwise the idea about cards staying in your hand having an effect is kind of cool, too.

 

Sorry, it seems i made it sound as a quicktime event... i'm just proposing a popping up option. I'll try to put a better example.

I'm fighting some fella while having a Blades card in hand. Everything is still dynamic, i hit him, he hit me, we use our skills with our cooldowns and stuff. Since i have a Blades card in hand, i have chance of combos that ends with a Blade skill coming in, so after hitting my enemy with a thrust skill, over my character pops a notice saying "combo available!", meaning that IF the next skill i use is double slash, it will have enhanced effect, but that doesn't stop combat; The guy can still hit me with all he want if i stop to ponder if i should use double slash or a defensive skill or whatever other skill that may come in handy. If i chose to use other skill than Double Slash, the combo is no longer available.

You see, it's just matter of what i decide to do, i don't need to freeze the entire server while i ponder. Hope it's better explained now.

 

I don't see what the big deal about the card system is. Every game, it's the same old thing. Pick your skill that you have and use those skills. What so fun about that? With the deck system, I still have a chance to fight other people. There is skill involved but a lot has to do with chance and that is a major PLUS in my book. I don't have to practice all the time to take on people who do practice all the time. It's luck at the the core and I don't know about others, but, I'm 100% behind that. If I wanted to waste my life trying to compete, I'd play World of Warcraft's arena system. The direction this game is going couldn't be better. I'm sure all the people who play World of Warcraft and all the other MMO's will find comfort knowing they don't have to solely rely on their skill deployment anymore. It's like a picnic now. A picnic to be enjoyed. Long live SotA!

 

I understand. It sounded much more involved previously.

So the idea would be the more cards of a certain type you have available in your hand, that more likely a combo is available? Would your idea then mean that if you were to use a combo, a Blades card is expended automatically by following up the Thrust with a Double-Slash to perform the Quadruple Slash?

 

So you're agreeing with the idea that card combat is so inherently random that it levels the playing field between good players and bad players? Those with skill and practice and experience under their belt versus newbies, casuals and lazy gamers alike? Do you think that will foster a sense of achievement or accomplishment after a month? Do you believe that will encourage people to come play, when they know that no matter how good they get, the randomness will level the playing field so that someone can just wallop at their keyboard as their best cards come up and have a chance to win?

 

Yes to the first, no to the second; i use my combo and the card stays. I'm considering that combos aren't as decisive as you proposed, just the same extra effect we have now. Also, let's take in consideration that having a more traditional base system, i'm assuming we're talking about cooldowns for every skill, so being able to finish the combo it's also matter of having the skill ready. If the second skill is not ready, you should wait until it cooldown ends to perform the combo, and that means you'll be doing nothing (or relying on auto attack) on that time, so it's unadvisable.

What i'm trying to suggest is to implement a duality in the skill tree related deck you proposed; keeping the card allows you to perform combos while consuming it may give you a temporal buff of some kind for a while. While combos aren't as powerful as an steady buff to some stats, they're unpredictable so they're hard to counter. Card consuming gives you a steady powerup, but if you enter that state you can be crowd controlled or countered by enemies.

 

That's what I love about this system the best. I don't have to practice constantly. I can just come in and have a fair chance at fighting all the people who practice all the time. There isn't so much skill involved when the cards are random as such. It's the luck of the draw. I, for one, welcome that with open arms. A roll of the dice, plus a little skill, should be the way to go. I don't know if the majority of people from every single game will agree with me. But I'm tired of being at the bottom of the totem poll. This system allows me to compete. Perhaps, not through skill, but through chance. Either way, I love it and I'm sure it'll attract tons of people to this game when they realize they have a chance too.